Payroll Specialist

Job Overview

As a Payroll Specialist, you’ll keep payroll accurate, timely, and compliant while supporting employees and finance partners. You’ll sett up and approving pay runs, auditing hours and changes, handling terminations and off-cycle runs, managing benefits and garnishment deductions, and handing clean payroll data to our accounting team for journal entries. This role calls for careful analysis, sound accounting practices, and discretion when handling confidential information.

Duties:

Run each pay cycle

• Process semi-monthly, biweekly, and hourly pay runs in Rippling (or the client's payroll platform) for multiple legal entities.
• Collect and audit inputs before each run: timesheets and manager-approved hours, new hires, terminations, compensation changes, bonuses (including sign-on bonuses), commissions, expense reimbursements, and contractor-to-employee changes.
• Prepare a payroll variance analysis for each run. Compare against the prior period, update the roster, and write commentary on every hire, termination, and compensation change.
• Submit the run for client approval, track approvals, and release payroll and the related reports on time.
• Run off-cycle payrolls and final pay when needed, and archive or reverse runs the system creates in error.

Employee lifecycle and compliance

• Process hires and terminations with the right effective dates and final pay rules. Confirm manager approval of hours before a termination cut-off.
• Keep cost centers, departments, and locations correct in the payroll system, because they drive our accounting classes.
• Manage garnishments, tax withholding, state registrations, and quarter-end tax reconciliations. Reconcile payroll tax liability accounts to filings and payments.
• Handle Flexible Spending Account (FSA) deductions, true-ups, and rate changes, and work with the payroll vendor's support team to fix errors.
• Respond to employee and client payroll questions with accuracy and a calm tone.

Benefits, PEO, and accounting handoff

• Reconcile benefits invoices, PEO fees, workers' compensation, and carrier files to payroll deductions each cycle.
• Prepare the payroll journal report and supporting files each cutoff: payroll register, accrued payroll, accrued PTO, FSA, and benefits allocations.
• Review payroll and benefits journal entries prepared by the accounting team, and clear variances in payroll liability accounts (for example, negative balances in tax or garnishment liabilities).
• Keep an up-to-date payroll calendar, procedure documents, and a shared drive with every file filed in the right folder.

Process improvement

• Support client onboarding and system implementations, including payroll platform setup, bulk uploads, and cost center structure.
• Find recurring errors and fix them at the source, with the goal of fewer than 5 transaction errors per period.

Qualifications:

Required

• 4 or more years running multi-entity payroll in the US, ideally in a PEO, outsourced accounting, or professional services setting.
• Hands-on experience with Rippling (preferred) or a comparable platform such as Gusto, ADP, or Paychex.
• Working knowledge of federal and multi-state payroll tax, wage and hour rules, garnishments, and benefits deductions (medical, dental, vision, FSA, 401(k)).
• Strong Google Sheets or Excel skills, including lookups and variance analysis.
• Familiarity with QuickBooks Online and the payroll journal entries that flow from a pay run.
• Careful attention to detail, a habit of documenting, and the confidence to say "this is wrong, hold the run".

Preferred

• CPP, FPC, or a similar payroll certification.
• Experience with a PEO relationship and workers' compensation allocations.
• Experience with healthcare or technology companies, including hourly care staff.
• Experience supporting client-facing work in a fractional or outsourced finance firm.

Pay: $27.71 - $33.37 per hour

Expected hours: 10.0 – 20.0 per week

Work Location: Remote

Plata: $27.71 - $33.37 an hour

Rad na daljinu: Da

Izvor: https://indeed.com/viewjob?jk=37b5b90b46aa6bc2

Nivo: senior